Close encounters of the wet kind

Barbara Shulgasser, EXAMINER MOVIE CRITIC

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, August 30, 1995

Until Labor Day rolls around and school starts again, parents will be desperately searching for inoffensive diversions to share with their children. "Magic in the Water" just squeaks under the wire of inoffensiveness.

Mark Harmon plays Jack Black, a psychiatrist with a radio talk show from which he dispenses such compassionate wisdom to his troubled callers as, "Get a life" and

"Stop whining."

He is just as warm and caring with his children, Ashley (Sarah Wayne) and Josh (Joshua Jackson), who live with their mother. Jack has been pressured by his ex-wife to take the kids on vacation to a Canadian seaside town where the prime tourist attraction is the legend of a Loch Ness Monster-like creature living in the water. Jack takes the trip without much enthusiasm, ignoring the children during the drive north, talking all the while on his cellular telephone. (This is the second movie about an uncaring father I've seen in a week. The first was "The Amazing Panda Adventure," another movie about bonding with animals. Alert the trend police.)

While Jack remains irritable and distant, young Ashley bonds with Orky, the creature. Of course, she is skeptical at first, but she performs a scientific experiment to prove the monster's existence: She leaves Oreos on the dock at night. When she returns the next morning, she finds the cookies but the creamy filling is gone. Who could have done it but a large, magical marine animal?

Q.E.D.

No one believes her until Jack is kidnapped and inhabited by the monster. Apparently, inhabitation by a large water creature is a fairly pleasant experience. Jack returns a loving, goofy father who suddenly wants to commune with his kids and dig a hole in the sand to see if he can reach China. Just the kind of dad every kid wants. Ashley and Josh start to worry.

With the help of a wise native Canadian living next door on the beach, the children learn that the creature is trying to communicate through Jack that the water is being polluted by evil men illegally dumping toxic wastes offshore.

That's about it.

I am trying to remember how bad "Son of Flubber" really was back when my poor parents had to sit through it with me in their laps. Perhaps exposure to idiotic movies is something from which children eventually recover. You can probably see this movie without doing any major damage, but you and yours will have much more fun reading together from the collected works of Dr. Seuss.

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